Shoalts, 26, is a history buff in a big way. He has a bachelor's degree in history from Brock, a master's from McMaster and will be studying for his doctorate at Mac this fall, specializing in historic explorers.

Shoalts doesn't just study it, he lives it.

Originally from Fenwick, Ont., one of the five historic villages that make up the town of Pelham in the centre of Niagara Region, Shoalts travels north a couple times a year discovering land and rivers not found on any map.

Recently, he returned from the Again River; don't even try to Google Map it. The river is in northern Ontario and flows into Hudson Bay. There he discovered nine waterfalls, one by going over it and smashing up his canoe. Discovering those waterfalls will change the Canadian map, he says.

During his adventures, Shoalts has taken on rapids, grizzly bears, polar bears and hypothermia. The Spectator has asked Shoalts five questions about his exploits:

Why do you do this?

Because the age of exploration is not over. There are still these unexplored places on Earth that are still giving up their secrets … in northern Canada, there are rivers so remote that they don't have names. And partly, I love the idea of being the first, the glory of discovery.

Isn't it kind of dangerous?

It's very dangerous. In this expedition I just did (on the Again River), none of these waterfalls were marked on any maps and I wasn't anticipating finding any waterfalls. The first one I came across, because I didn't know it was there, I was actually swept right over it. My canoe was crushed, and I was actually sucked down under the water. But I just had to repair my canoe and continue down river.

How do you prepare for an expedition?

It requires weeks, if not months, of archival research, looking through the records of the Geological Survey of Canada, explorers, all sorts of different things, all to determine if this river has actually been explored or not. Because the reality is that 99 per cent of the rivers in the world have been explored, the trick is finding the 1 per cent that haven't.

What are you most proud of?

The Again River waterfalls were a pretty big discovery. I wasn't expecting it at all and when I came to the first one and I got swept over it, I was out of breath for a little while, and my canoe was just pounded out of shape, basically destroyed. I fixed it, and then I thought, ‘This is astonishing, I just discovered a waterfall. How great.' Never did I guess that there would be eight more waiting for me down river. One … was over 40 feet tall, which possibly makes it the largest waterfall discovered in Canada in almost 100 years.

What is the craziest story from your explorations?

Well, I've been stung by wasps in the Amazon; I spent four nights in a tree in northern B.C. because of a grizzly bear; I've been growled at alone on the shore of Hudson Bay by a huge, massive 1,000-pound adult polar bear; and I've been swept over a waterfall and had my canoe crushed hundreds of miles from civilization … so when I was swept over that waterfall, I felt like a cat with nine lives.

For more information about Shoalts and his adventures, visit his website: adamshoalts.com.